T. A. Pai Management Institute, popularly known as TAPMI, Manipal has earned initial accreditation of
its postgraduate programs by recent decision of the Board of Directors of AACSB International.
(The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business-International). AACSB International is
the longest serving global accrediting body for business schools that offer bachelors, masters, and
doctorate degrees in business and accounting. TAPMI joins an elite group of institutions that have
achieved business accreditation from AACSB International. TAPMI is the first AICTE approved
B-School and Second in India to achieve this distinguished hallmark of excellence in management
education. World over, Less than 5% have earned this distinguished hallmark of excellence in
management education.
WHAT IS AACSB-INTERNATIONAL?
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is
the oldest and toughest accreditation organisation in the world.
Headquartered at Tampa, Florida, US, the organisation has been in
existence since 1916. Initially an essentially American accreditation
organisation, AACSB expanded its operations during late 20th
century to both enable the spread of the best practices of
management education globally and to facilitate global tie ups
among business schools. (Please visit www.aacsb.edu).

CRISIL awarded A*** under B-School grading at national and
Karnataka State level to TAPMI in 2012.

Editorial Team
Publications Committee

MIRC (Student) Committee

Events at the Institute
Exchange Program With St. Mary's, USA

Faculty Contributions / Achievements

India Immersion Program of St. Mary's College,
California was conducted on July 11 &12, 2013 at
Bangalore. The participants comprised students
of t-GEMBA program (Trans Global MBA) and are
senior corporates in the ranks of Vice President,
Director and Entrepreneur. TAPMI organized
Cross Cultural Global Negotiation Program in
which the US participants represented a company
attempting to sell captive power plants to the
Indian clients.

Prof. Sushanta Sarma's book review on
“Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in
Institutional Studies of Organizations” has
been published in the current issue of South
Asian Journal of Management (page 163-166).

•

Dr. R C Natarajan and Dr Gururaj Kidiyoor
participated in Harvard Business School
Executive Education Program:
Global
Colloquium on Participant-Centered Learning
(Glocoll) - from July 21, 2013 to July 27, 2013
at the Harvard Business School, Boston, USA.

KESS Seminars

The Indian group was represented by 20 students
of TAPMI, Manipal and TAPMI CEE (Weekend
program students). The exercise exposed Indian
students to live negotiations of a complex B to B
product and helped their negotiation skills and
their understanding of cross cultural sensitivity.

•

The Immersion Program included a landmark
lecture on the “Emergence of Indian MNCs” by
Prof. Sunil Mani - Planning Commission Chair,
Professor at Centre for Development Studies,
Trivandrum. The Program included a visit to
Biocon where a detailed briefing was given by Mr.
Ravi Dasgupta - Group Head, Human Resources.
The participants also visited Infosys, Bangalore
where they interacted with Mr. Sanjay Purohit,
Director, Global Strategies at Infosys.
Dr. R. C. Natarajan - Director TAPMI, in his
Keynote, gave a lucid account of Indian Economic
reality which set the pace for the event.

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Prof. Madhu Veeraraghavan presented a
series of three Knowledge and Experience
Sharing Seminars (KESS) on “How to publish
in good Peer Reviewed Journals”, aimed at
helping researchers to improve academic
writing and publishing skills. He shared his
experiences and insights as a writer and
reviewer of academic research papers,
gathered over the years.

•

Mr. Gurumurthy of Capital Market made a
presentation on CAPITALINE database on July
30, 2013.This presentation was very useful for
researchers pursuing PhD or working on
research projects that require a large sample,
firm-level data collection.

Research Seminar
•

Prof. (Col) James delivered a Research
Seminar on “A study on the impact of
Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Cognitive
Competencies on the Performance of Aspiring
Managers” on July 31, 2013.

Dr. Shashidhar Acharya, Head, Dept. of
Community Dentistry, Manipal taught a
course on “Public and Community Healthcare
Practices” for Term 4 of Healthcare students.

New Staff

Mr. Prajwal R M has joined
as Technical Executive. Prior
to joining TAPMI, he was
employed at D-VoiS
Broadband Pvt. Ltd. as a
Network Engineer.

Guest Faculty
•

•

Ms. Wilhelmina Spandana
has joined as Academic
Assistant.

Executive Education Program
Project Management at L&T Mysore C-TEA
Prof. Raghunath Rudran conducted two one day
programmes for Graduate Engineering Trainees of
L&T (Larsen & Toubro), in the area of Project
Management, at the L&T C-TEA (L&T Center for
Technological and Engineering Applications)
Mysore campus, on 13.07.2013 and on
22.07.2013.
A one day session on the Project Management
was also handled by Prof. Ajith Kumar for the L& T
Engineers on 17.07.2013.

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The programme on Project Management covered
various topics such as Overview of Project
Management stages, understanding the nature of
projects, what differentiates project management
from other management, Project Manager's roles
and responsibilities, Work Break down Structure,
Networking Techniques, probabilistic approach to
activity time estimation, use of beta distribution
and normal distribution to estimate probability of
project completion in a given time, etc. All these
are expected to enable the GETs to perform better
during Project monitoring and execution. The
engineers will be later posted to various sites of
L&T, including gulf countries, where they will be
involved in various project management activities.

He further stated that talent and management as
separate entities. According to him, managing
talent means ensuring the quality and quantity of
people in place to meet current and future
business. Mr. Parmar further elaborated the role
and importance of talent in driving the business
and mentioned how HR has transitioned from a
support function of an organisation to the strategy
formulator. Mr. Parmar stated how brain drain has
been affecting the organisations which resulted in
the loss of talent pool. He further explained the
employee life cycle, which starts from Recruitment
and ends at Employee separation. He mentioned
that the employee dissatisfaction was the main
reason for the dismal state of employee retention
rate in the present scenario and spoke on different
measures adopted by NHMH to battle this issue.
He also mentioned the different stages of talent
management process which are: Future
requirement analysis, Gap analysis, Training and
Development and finally Motivation and Retention.
Mr. Parmar spoke on the importance of Key Result
Area (KRA) and its role in competency analysis of
an employee. He also emphasised the periodic
reviews of the KRA's and their association with
Gap analysis. The latter part of the lecture was
based on the motivational aspect of an HR
function. Mr. Parmar stated that motivation and
retention are the major grey areas for the present
HRM community, and without proper motivation
there would be uncertainty in employee retention.
Organisational flexibility, tools for planning growth
and new service initiatives are some of the key
benefits of Talent management process as per Mr.
Parmar. He spoke on the harsh consequences of
not recruiting a resource at the right time and on
the importance of the slogan “employee first and
customer second”. He mentioned that the one of
the major functions of Talent management is
“employee engagement”, and imparting work-life
balance which, according to him, are essential to
reduce attrition. Mr. Parmar spoke on the
development of leadership traits by the HR
function and termed it as one of the major KRAs for
HR management. His further mention was on
ownership of Talent which starts at the top (CEO
and Directors) and flows down to the HR level.

Industry Interface
Investors Clinic on “Investment Opportunities in
Equities & Precious Metals” by BSE, Bangalore
The Bangalore Stock Exchange organized an
Investors Clinic on “Investment Opportunities in
Equities & Precious Metals” on Saturday July 20,
2013 at Bangalore. This was the first of its kind in
India. The program aimed at educating the small
investors on investment opportunities in capital
markets & precious metals trading.
The uniqueness of this program was that there
was a panel discussion on the subject followed by
a personal advice from the experts to each
individual investor on portfolio management. This
was a prescription to help investors in minimizing
the losses they have been incurring and at the
same time to make them understand the
intricacies of the stock market.
The program was attended by Mr. Nagaraj T from
TAPMI-CEE, Bangalore.

Insights into HR by Mr. Jignesh Parmar
It was a special evening for the students of
TAPMI,which had the presence of Mr. Jignesh
Parmar, GM (HR and Administration), NHMH.
Mr. Parmar started off the session by defining the
word “Talent” and explained why talent is of
foremost importance to the HR wing of an
organisation.
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According to Mr. Parmar, some of the key benefits
of Talent Management function are: reduction in
staffing cost, vacancy rates, staffing cycle time and
turnover. He concluded the lecture by defining HR
as a process driver rather than a process initiator
and its impact on managing appraisal cycle as well
as employee grievances.

(NABH) and the reasons behind the importance of
this accreditation.
They are: the views of the provider of healthcare
services, recipient of healthcare services and
organizer of healthcare services. He focused on
different concerns of the providers. He said “it is
very important to provide care as per the
established norms. To provide such service,
adequate resources are needed. In the end of the
process, self-satisfaction is generated with the
outcome. This should also contribute to the
enhancement of skills and competence of the staff
and employees of the healthcare service
provided”.

‘Making of a NABH Accredited Hospital –
Redefining healthcare delivery system'
The highly energetic and enthusiastic future
managers of TAPMI, Manipal welcomed Dr. (Col.)
R. R. Pulgaonkar, Chief Executive Officer, Jaslok
Hospital & Research Center on a quiet and rainy
morning. Dr. Pulgaonkar discussed with the
students many practical aspects of healthcare
management – especially the quality management
process, the different accreditations available for
hospitals, and how to go about achieving one.
Dr. Pulgaonkar, step by step demystified the
process of achieving the National Accreditation
Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers

Finally, he concluded the discussion by quoting,
“Accreditation is a journey and not a destination”.

Dr. Pulgaonkar addressing the students
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An insight into 'Tower Watson
Global Grading System'
TAPMI, Manipal witnessed a guest lecture on 13th
July 2013 by Mr. Kevin Freitas, Head, Rewards
and Organization Development, and
Mr. Satheesh KV, Senior Manager, Rewards and
HR Technology, Flipkart. Students of 2012 – 2014
batch attended this lecture on 'Tower Watson
Global Grading System' – a systematic approach
to job levelling which helps organizations manage
the opportunities and challenges of reward, talent
program design and delivery. Towers Watson is a
leading global professional services company that
helps organizations improve performance through
effective people, risk and financial management.

expectations at different levels of the
organizations. It helps align jobs with other HR
Processes and systems.
The guest lecture was concluded by the speakers
explaining how Flipkart shares its data with Tower
Watson Global Grading System and how it
provides Flipkart with its grades and payments visà-vis industry comparison payments at no cost.
Comparison data with specific companies can be
gained through request on a custom price. Over a
period of time, role and payment determination is
done by the help of heuristics. The following day,
14th July 2013, the speakers interacted with the
newly joined students of 2013 – 2015 batch on the
topic: Flipkart's growth story.

The speakers first briefed the audience on the
interpretation of Job Levelling. It provides a basis
for describing job requirements and performance

Mr. Satheesh KV and Mr. Kevin Freitas addressing the students
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Employee Engagement and
Total Rewards Strategy

“High engagement capital drives 23% high
business performance.”A business performance,
he said, is the key metric for company's growth.

Mr. Govind Ramachandran from AVAYA was
at his eloquent best at the recent guest lecture
concluded at TAPMI, Manipal on July 11,
2013. The HR Leader (SAARC region)
explained in detail the 'Employee Engagement
and Total Rewards Strategy' by AVAYA for
motivation and productivity of an employee.

He further provided the key to improve
engagement ratio and productivity of the company
with some easy steps. They involve to

The enriching experience for the students started
with a brief introduction of AVAYA. The telecom
multinational has 16000 employees in 54 countries
with more than 30 million small and medium size
users. Its offices are across the globe with
customers as hotel groups, airlines, educational
institutions and banks to name a few.

Employee Engagement Survey

•

Revenue per employee

Know the employee at personal level

•

Grow the individual with challenging
opportunities

•

Inspire to do the job with knowledge and
acumen

•

Involve in the process. If a person sees a value
in the work done, it produces better results

•

Reward for the commendable effort put in the
success

The interactive lecture with interesting questions
and responses from students made them stay
captivating from start to finish. Mr. Ramachandran
discussed that rewards and recognition are much
more diverse than just the numbers in the salary
slip. He elucidated that compensation is just onefourth of the total rewards. The other three are
health and welfare benefits, talent management
and retirement benefits, which are equally as
essential for the growth and inspiration of the
employee as the salary itself.

Beginning with the topic Mr. Ramachandran
explained that the health of a business rests on the
health of HR practices. The HR practices that he
discussed were:
•

•

Both factors are litmus to test if the employee is
engaged and productive which is analogous to the
company's growth as a business. Citing the
reference of Corporate Executive Board he said,

Mr. Ramachandran speaking on Employee Engagement
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Supply Chain Management in
Retail and Marketing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; An Industry Perspective
On 4th July, TAPMI was fortunate enough to host
three prominent personages of JDA Software
Group, Inc., Mr. Muralidhar Joishy, Vice President
- Consulting Services at JDA Software, Mr. Umesh
Gaur, Senior Director Consulting Services at JDA
Software and Mr. Vineet Subhedar, SME Supply
Chain Consulting at JDA Software, who took a
special session for the students with specialization
in Supply Chain Management. The brief session
was designed to bring forth the intricacies in
Supply Chain Management from an industry
perspective.

how Sweekar 1litre packs were so much in
demand that packaging for this brand was running
out. So the company switched over at that time to
packaging Sweekar 5 litre packs, Saffola 1 litre
packs and Saffola 5 litre packs. This ensured that
the production facility did not remain idle.With the
use of CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting
and Replenishment), the company was also able
to estimate the demand to a large extent, thus
ensuring that they did not lose out. CPFR brings
together the company and different vendors to
accurately estimate the demand. This demand is
then used to plan the production appropriately and
schedule the supply of raw materials in a JIT (JustIn-Time) fashion. This ensures lesser stock of
inventory is present on the shop floor, which in turn
would reduce the money tied up.The team of
consultants from JDA Software also impressed
upon the students, the 5 important facets of any
supply chain, namely, vendor development,
flexibility, centralization, supply distribution and
quality management.

The session started off with the benefits of a global
platform for all the industries. Mr. Vineet cited the
example of Ford Ecosport and Ford Fusion, both
of which had standardized parts so as to reduce
the inventory levels required. This has saved a lot of
operating expense for Ford.
He next touched upon the benefits of capacity
utilization and production facility. The example
mentioned to illustrate this was of Sweekar and
Saffola, 2 leading oil brands. Mr. Vineet mentioned

Mr. Vineet speaking on Supply Chain Management
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The companies have realized the importance of
vendor relationships when it comes to cutting
costs. A typical supply chain consists of one or
more suppliers, one or more products made at the
plant and multiple channels that handle
distribution. A supply chain optimization generally
deals with optimization on the supplier side. He
also spoke on how the outlooks of manufacturing
industries have evolved over the years.
Traditionally, the focus had been on optimizing the
machine hours available, the productivity and the
manpower available, without considering the
demand for the finished products. This caused the
manufacturers to push their products into the
market when the supply was more than the
demand. The retailers and distributors were
expected to generate the pull for the products.
However, with the companies now looking at
distributors and retailers as more integral parts,
this situation has been addressed to a large extent.
The industries work on a pre-plan drawn out with
the help of their channel partners. Therefore, now
the production is done to meet the market
demands. The example of Samsung and its
retailers was quoted to prove this.

The team then highlighted the retail
responsiveness that is prevalent in the industry
today. Linkages are identified between products at
the retail level. For example, it makes more sense
to stock shades and sunscreens in the same retail
location. Demand signals are located at every POS
(Point of Sale) to capture a more accurate and
realistic picture. The next topic touched upon was
the Retailer Maturity Model, which highlighted how
retailers have grown over the years. Initially,
retailers were concerned only about infrastructure.
Then came the age when specialized business
acumen dominated. It was followed by the age of
integrated planning and execution, which
culminated in the era of consumer connected
retail. This era afforded the highest degree of
agility, flexibility and value. Private labels also
started emerging during this era.
The last topic of discussion centred on shelf
connected supply chain, an aspect of consumer
connected retail which deals at the shelf level
instead of shop level. Important aspects of these
are demand driven consumer centricity, cross
channel consistent brand experience, multidimensional view of customer and collaborative
planning. Its importance is particularly highlighted
in the fact that TESCO used this to great effect in
South Korea, wherein people could order online
after seeing these displays at the metro stations,
and get them delivered to their homes as per their
convenience.

The next topic for the session involved the key
challenges faced by the industries. These
challenges pertaining to demand uncertainty /
volatility, globalization, escalating customer
expectations and new product development were
now being addressed with the assistance of
channel partners. Nowadays, the selling is also
global. Moreover, if own production plants around
the world cannot make the product at the
cheapest rates, then the production is outsourced
to third party vendors. Supplier performance has
therefore emerged as a critical factor and is
determined by the weighted average of
technology, quality, responsiveness, delivery and
cost (TQRDC).

This session was of benefit to all the participating
students, and this was evident in the volume of
questions being asked of the team. They even took
time out to brief the students about JDA Software,
its journey over the years in India, and Impactix,
which is responsible for around 90% of the
planograms. Mr. Umesh particularly touched upon
how the acquisition of i2 Technologies and the
recently concluded merger with RedPraire have
boosted the competency of JDA Software, and
made it a truly end-to-end solutions provider.

This changing face of supply chain management
has met with a lot of resistance, owing to the
change in the associated roles and
responsibilities. The old guard has, however,
started seeing the associated benefits and things
are slowly moving forward.

The session concluded with Prof. Sanjay C.
Choudhari felicitating the guests with gift hampers
and thanking the guests for taking time out from
their busy schedules to enlighten the students.
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Leveraging the MBA education
to plan one's career
On 3rd July, students of TAPMI had an opportunity
to learn the intricacies of corporate challenges
from the speakers of JDA Software. The event was
divided mainly into a series of two guest lecture
sessions delivered by the top management of JDA
Software Group, Inc. out of which the first lecture
was given jointly by Mr. Umesh Gaur and Mr.
Muralidhar J.

According to him, the most important element for
a management graduate is the job profile, which
consists of elements like area, role, functional and
technical aspects. Mr. Umesh stressed on the
fact that students from other functional streams of
management (Marketing/Finance) are joining IT
firms in a profile which they are not conditioned
for, and this specifically is hampering their career
growth as they are losing out valuable time.

Mr. Umesh Gaur, who is presently designated as
Senior Director (Consulting) at JDA Software
started off the session. His agenda of the speech
was â&#x20AC;&#x153;How to leverage the MBA education to plan
one's careerâ&#x20AC;?.

He mentioned how the young graduates are
overlooking long term benefits and pursuing short
term targets based only on monetary constraints.
Mr. Umesh recommended that management
students should have more practical knowledge

Mr. Umesh Gaur interacting with the students
and have hands on experience of the latest
technology to achieve expected corporate
growth. He mentioned the importance of global
exposure and its impact on shaping up one's
intellect and attitude. Mr. Umesh also mentioned
the different career tracks in IT like Business
development, Project Management and IT
Consulting. He emphasized on the role of a
solution architect who has good command on
domain as well as process knowledge. Finally, he
concluded by stating that one should choose

Mr. Umesh quoted some examples from his life as
a student; he shared the experiences of his early
corporate life which actually started at IIM
Lucknow, when he was pursuing his management
education. Mr. Umesh also mentioned the
challenges he had to face while his association
with Wipro and i2 Technologies. He also shared his
experiences in the supply chain domain, which he
had to manage during the latter stage of his career.
Mr. Umesh spoke on different challenges that
management graduates are facing nowadays.
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his/her career based only on factors like core
competency, interest, academics, personality and
desire rather than focusing solely on monetary
aspects.

globe; he also mentioned the fact that changes in
customer needs have evolved new growth
opportunities for businesses. He spoke on the
competition that the present economy is facing
and the importance to adapting such changes.

The second part of the lecture was delivered by
Mr. Murlidhar J., VP Consulting Services, JDA
Software. He started off the session by sharing
incidents from his childhood days, his traditional
upbringing, his struggles while pursuing
graduation and his experience at JDA. The agenda
of Mr. Muralidhar's lecture was “Change and
Leadership” and its importance in career growth.
He spoke on the importance of change in the
present context. In his own words, “Change is an
inevitable phenomenon and the corporate should
be willing to adapt to this”. His lecture on change
was divided into four major parts – What is change,
Why change, When to change and How to change.

According to him, change is risky; but not
changing is a riskier proposition. Hence, adoption
is the only option. He also recommended that one
can create lasting changes by forming habits that
stick.While speaking on the context of leadership;
he gave examples of leaders like Imran khan and
Winston Churchill, who had displayed courageous
leadership in testing situations. He ended his
session by stating the importance of having a
vision strategy, taking right decisions, empowering
others and communicating effectively. His only
suggestion to students was to keep on learning as
it is the only parameter that will help them in the
long run. And with this the first part of the guest
lecture series came to its end.

Mr. Muralidhar gave examples of technological
and economical changes happening across the

Alumni Contributions
Novel By Alumni
Mr. Yudhishthir Joshi of 2005-07 batch is a Senior Consultant
at LogiStar Solutions Wichita, Kansas, USA in the Logistics and
Supply Chain domain. He has authored a book titled”
Alexized”. This is his debut novel.
He said, “The story of quest, told with alternative narrative
between past and present, will surely strike a cord. So please
do grab a copy and give it a read. And please do not hesitate to
send me your feedback. Good or bad, your review will definitely help me
improve and grow as a writer.”
Book name: Alexized
Paper back version: http://amazon.com/dp/1482782936
Kindle version:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle/dp/B00DVDZTUO
Guest Speaker at CII Conference, Mumbai.
Our alumnus Mr. Gopalakrishnan of 96-98 batch, who is currently
the Vice President & Business Head at Genpact LLC, Gurgaon was
one of the key speakers in the conference organised by the CII on
Reverse logistics in India, at Mumbai.
http://echoofindia.com/kolkata-tci-launches-logistics-focus-19792
http://www.exim-ace.com/NewsDetails.aspx?name=1487
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